Posted by John Byrne at 1:42 p.m.
Mayor Richard Daley today said aldermen are free to broker whatever deal they want to create an office with the power to police the City Council, but they shouldn’t tamper with the current inspector general that the mayor himself nominates.
Aldermen are meeting privately today for briefings on Daley’s proposal to extend Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s power by allowing him to investigate the City Council.
Many aldermen have balked at that, arguing the inspector general owes his post to Daley’s nomination and can’t be counted on to serve as a truly independent voice. Some aldermen have suggested appointing a "board of directors" to make the nominations for the corruption-fighting post.
That’s OK with Daley, but he said the board-appointed inspector general would have to exist alongside the one he nominates.
"We have an inspector general over the executive branch of government," Daley said at an event welcoming Walgreens drug store’s e-commerce department into the Louis Sullivan-designed Sullivan Center downtown. "The Congress, and the state legislature has their own inspector general over the legislative body of government. So if (aldermen) want to, that’s up to them. Because the state has done that, the federal government has done that, rightfully so."
Daley said an inspector general dedicated to keeping an eye on the City Council would not be costly.
"There’s only 50 people, 50 elected officials, and maybe 150 to 200 employees," Daley said. "There’s not a large segment of the employment."
The mayor insisted the Office of Compliance – the city ethics department where executive director Anthony Boswell has been suspended after Ferguson reported he mishandled a sexual harassment complaint by a student intern – has separate responsibilities from the inspector general. Compliance could not be folded into an expanded inspector general’s office, Daley said.
"There’s a difference between inspector general and compliance. It’s day and night," he said.
Addressing other issues, Daley said local Teamster truck drivers should be happy they have work, responding to the union’s recent vote to give its leadership authority to call a strike. Teamsters work at Chicago’s airport and clear city streets after snowfalls.
Teamsters are mad at Daley for reducing O’Hare and Midway Airport snow removal drivers from a guaranteed, eight-hour work day to just two hours on days without snow.
"You can’t sit there and not do work and be paid for eight hours," Daley said.
The mayor said he doubts the Teamsters will actually strike.
"I don’t know how they can strike," he said. "My argument is, if there’s no work to be done and they get two hours pay, I think they should be very thankful to the taxpayers they’re getting two hours pay."
"There would be 50,000 people applying for these jobs" if the city sought to replace striking Teamsters, Daley said.
Daley also said the financial problems facing Broadway Bank, which is owned by the family of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, should not scuttle Giannoulias’ campaign, Daley said.
"It’s happened to every bank, almost, in Illinois, large and small," he said. "Unfortunately, smaller banks are closing."
"(Broadway) is not the exception," he said, but added Giannoulias needs to explain the situation to the public between now and election day.
Daley once again refused to name the roughly 90 people who submitted applications to the city to serve as alderman in the 1st Ward or 29th Ward.
Many are currently working in the private sector, and their employers would find out they were looking for new jobs if their names were publicized, Daley argued.
"It could be someone from your company who might want to become aldermen, but they don’t want to tell their boss. How’s that?" he said.
Daley has until March 16 to name a replacement for Manuel Flores, who resigned from the 1st Ward to head up the Illinois Commerce Commission.
The mayor must replace Isaac Carothers — the 29th Ward aldermen who pleaded guilty to federal charges in a zoning-bribery case – by April 2.